A True Anglican - Richard Hooker Quote

After my last post, I found this quote which I really enjoy, it gives me peace about this whole thing. It is from Richard Hooker, pretty much a doctor of the Anglican Church, he was an extremely influential theologian, and was one of the only protestants in the reformation era who spoke well of Catholics. He wrote this about those who condemned Catholics for not believing in Sola Fide:

"God is no captious sophister, eager to trip us up whenever we say amiss, but a
courteous tutor, ready to amend what, in our weakness or our ignorance, we say
ill, and to make the most of what we say aright."

Hopefully it is true, I found it interesting that the contemporary Pope at the time of Hooker, said that his works would endure till the end of the age and spoke highly of him - or rather as highly as one could expect a Catholic to speak of a Protestant/Anglican.

Ugh...God help me. (Catholic v. Protestant)... again

Ecclesiology:
"But since it would take too long to set out here the successions of all the churches, we shall turn to that great, ancient and universally known church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles Peter and Paul, and we shall show that the tradition it has received of the apostles and the faith that it preaches to men has come down to our time through the regular succession of its bishops; and thus we shall confute all those who, in whatever way, whether by self-complacency, vainglory, blindness or error, enter into unauthorized assemblies. For it is with this Roman church, by reason of its more powerful pre-eminence that every other church, that is to say all the faithful everywhere, ought to agree, inasmuch as in this church the apostolic tradition has been preserved continuously by those who come from everywhere." St. Irenaeus ("Against All Heresies," c. 180 A.D.)

"there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul’, or ‘I belong to Apollos’, or ‘I belong to Cephas (Peter)’, or ‘I belong to Christ.’ Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?" - St. Paul (1 Corinthians 1:10-13, c.60 AD)

Justification:
"If any one saith, that men are justified, either by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ, or by the sole remission of sins... let him be anathema" - (Catholic Council of Trent c. 1550 AD)

"it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, ‘he sat down at the right hand of God’, and since then has been waiting ‘until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.’ For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified." - St. Paul? Barnabas? Priscilla? (Hebrews 10:10-14 (c. 95 AD)

I have spent all of my spare time and energy in this Catholic-Protestant debate, I've lost sleep and friends and a possible future career. I am so tired. This is just a sample of what I deal with. I've discovered something strange. No matter how hard I try to read Church History, it is overwhelmingly 'Catholic', it supports the papacy and the historic episcopate (bishops), etc. BUT, No matter how hard I try to read Catholicism into the Scriptures, I find they are overwhelmingly Lutheran/Protestant.

So I'm left with this horrific situation, either turn my back on all of Church History and Sacred Tradition, including those which chose the canon of scripture, OR, to turn my back on the Sacred Word of God, eternal immutable, inspired and authoritative. The problem is that both groups claim they can read both scripture and tradition with a clear conscience, well I can't. I can't read the Council of Nicea and not be Catholic, and I can't read Romans and not be Protestant.

The other problem is that both Tradition and Scripture hold Anathemas for those who reject them. Both claiming to be from God. So St. Paul writes in Galatians 1:8 that if anyone believes a different gospel than the one he taught, they are damned, and St. Irenaeus writes if anyone divides the church or is out of communion with Rome, they are anathema.

Now Protestants say obviously the church screwed up and was led into heresy, and Catholics say obviously my interpretation of scripture is wrong. I've tried so hard to read the New Testament as a Catholic, but short of removing Romans, Galatians, Corinthians and Hebrews, I could not do it. Luther - no matter how late he came in church history - I believe was correct in his interpretation of imputed righteousness and sola fide. Catholics will laugh and say 'so the gospel itself, the central message of the church was unknown to it for nearly 16 centuries?!', whilst Protestants must embarrassingly say 'yes'. Catholics must embarrassingly say that even though the scriptures clearly show this, they are wrong and that really Scripture is only a part of Tradition and can't be used against it.

And so my soul is looking like Ireland as it always is.

It is also two different conceptions of God. In Lutheranism/Anglicanism God has peace with humanity, his wrath has been satisfied, he loves everyone, and if they merely believe, they will be saved and immediately after death be in the presence of God. In Catholicism God is like 'Two-Face' in Batman, if you commit a mortal sin the gun is to your head, but if you go through the proper cleansing ritual, then suddenly he loves you again. And even if you do everything right your whole life, you still get burned (purgatory). In Luther salvation is the gift of God, in Trent it is the temporary chance of God.

Yesterday I watched Rob Bell's "The Gods Aren't Angry", and it was really good. But it was the epitome of Luther, he argues well that if this idea -of God only loving us because we offer him something - is true, then there's no more point to Christianity than Judaism or Paganism for that matter, just another group of humans, trying to appease the angry gods. So does God love me? or does he burn with righteous anger towards me because I am a heretic who actively divides his bride the church, with mortal sins on my soul which will earn me eternal damnation?....ugh, I'm so tired of this.

Unity not Uniformity

During a college Q & A the famous apologist Ravi Zacharias was asked by a Muslim why Christianity was so splintered and that if he wanted to join a church how would he pick the true one out of all of the thousand denominations. This I thought would be Ravi's time to plug the Christian and Missionary Alliance (his denomination), but rather he said something which I will attempt to quote: "Know this, that unity is not uniformity, and that ultimately Salvation does not depend on which denomination you are affiliated with, but rather with whether or not you know Jesus Christ".

I thought it was certainly a different way of answering the question. Catholicism's 'extra ecclessiam nulla salus' is another standard answer. I thought this was a good quote on Ravi's behalf for a few reasons. It is true to early Christianity, in 1 Corinthians 1 St. Paul talks about denominations already forming. Indeed many of the epistles are to fragmented churches with disagreements and problems, there was the schism in Corinth, the racist jews that our first *Pope sat with in Galatia* (Peter - see Gal 2), and the Roman church of course with all the division we can read about in Romans 14. This yields alot of interest to me. Note this passage:

"Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarrelling over opinions. Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgement on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. Who are you to pass judgement on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand. Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. Those who observe the day, observe it in honour of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honour of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honour of the Lord and give thanks to God...Why do you pass judgement on your brother or sister?...each of us will be accountable to
God." - Romans 14:1-6, 10 NRSV

What a great way to look at the faith, I guess he is a Saint for a reason. This is God's message, it's the exact opposite from the Catholic or Calvinistic method. St. Paul doesn't say 'for those of you abstaining from meat, ANATHEMA!!! may God's curses torment you, Ye heathen Heretical schismatic who would divide the apostolic unity of the one true church!!!!PHGSODIHSGPISDGJ'.... Thank God for ecumenical Paul. This isn't any of that fundamentalist 'the truth always divides', it's just 'yes, we disagree, but don't judge each other, and worry about yourself and God - that's who you are accountable to.'

I like what Paul also says in Ephesians 2 about how Gentiles and Jews are united in Christ, I think the same is true of the church when he writes "For he [Jesus] is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us...In him the whole structure is joined together" Eph 2: 14, 21 (NRSV). So later when he writes, "there is one body and one Spirit...one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all." Eph 4:4-6 (NRSV) it really shows how Christ is in all and he has broken down the barriers. Even if we have 'broken communion' we are all in communion with Christ. The unity of the church does not depend on man, much like creation, salvation and all the other major points of the bible, but depends on God. It would seem we can't do anything right, and so Christ did it for us, again.

The Gift of God - Covenent, Salvation and Christology

I have been struggling with the age old issue that seperates Protestants and Catholics: What place do works have in salvation? I find that there are 3 key texts for understanding this (in my pathetic opinion) James 2, Ephesians 2, and Matthew 25.

I've already done James 2, and I must say that Catholics win some ground in that it does *sound like a refutation of Sola Fide, although Calvin and Jared compose a good counter-argument. The main problem is the fact that if they are right (Catholics), how on earth do faiths retain our justification. That's when we step from the biblical to the traditional, suddenly we find a phrase like 'retain our justification' and then we fall into this weird sphere which leaves us with a God who cares more about physical actions then the position of the heart, in essence a pharisaical (is that a word?) legalism, which many Catholic complain to me about (actually only 3 but still). On the other side, we have of course the free-grace-r's, whom Bonhoeffer dismisses quite effectively as well in his chapter on "Cheap Grace".

I read through the other 2 passages today and here are my thoughts and conclusions - at least for now, which shockingly place me in the sphere of Protestantism, something I haven't seen in a while. It appears I might be reshaking Luther's hand again, before all is said and done.

Ephesians 1-2.
I've been trying REALLY hard not to read my bible in the way I was taught as a reformed baptist, and been actively trying to make my bible sound like Catholicism, I have of course a strange Wesleyan-Orthodox theology, and so reading Ephesians 1 - the Calvinist gospel, yielded an interesting result for me.

Now, I go with the Arminians in that when I read Ephesians 1 and everything about predestination I see St. Paul discussing more of a category, rather than individuals. I think he's discussing the church as a whole, the new covenant group, and that God somehow has pre-destined (for a God outside time and space, I don't see how foreknowledge without predestination is possible) the church. So, it says in v4 that we are chosen to be "Holy and Blameless" meaning sanctification. In these chapters St. Paul contrasts the 'others', the pagans, those ignorant of Christ, and the Elect. Those whom God chose to reveal Christ to. Those in the new covenant. So he sealed them with the Holy Spirit and these are God's people.

He keeps saying though things like 'heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation' and that the people 'believed in him'. Very Protestant (i'm not honestly saying St. Paul was protestant or Catholic, I'm just saying it is points on their side. He seems to be saying that the formula is: 1. you were bad, 2. luckily God predestined you to be holy, 3. (because) you heard the gospel and believed. Paul always talks about faith and grace in these chapters and rejects the notion that the people of God/the church/believers really had anything to do with it. He is saying (in my opinion) that Christ achieved it all.

Riches is another key theme, it is that when Christ came and died he 'drew men unto himself' (Jn 6:44) and that they could become 'in Him' and 'in Christ'. The amazing thing to me is the pattern, it is that CHRIST earned it, NOT us. There can be no merit. The Catholic position is the opposite in some ways, in that they believe in salvation by grace, but that we can still merit our salvation. As St. Thomas Aquinas states:

"Man, by his natural endowments, cannot produce meritorious works
proportionate to everlasting life; and for this a higher force is needed, viz.
the force of grace. And thus without grace man cannot merit everlasting life"
(St. Thomas Aquinas ST I-II:109:5)

However in Ephesians 3:13-14 it says "in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility" (ESV). This is of course Christology, talking about how the blood of Christ brings unity between the believers. But I am always amazed at how throughout the letter the theme is always - Christ achieves eternal life, he distributes grace, and in his crucifixion he has bought all of the elect, they HAVE BEEN saved, in the Past tense. Somehow, mysteriously Christ bought the salvation of St. Thomas Aquinas, over 1000 years before he was born, because he was one of the elect, he 'believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness'.

It says in Chapter 2:4 "even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved" (ESV). It is a reoccuring theme that Christ has made us alive, not us. How do we know those who have been made alive? they have heard the gospel, they believe, they are being made holy. Again St. Paul hammers it out 'by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.' It seems clear to me that the case is closed for Paul, salvation is seperate from holiness, from works, from boasting.

Now I know Catholics will argue 2 things here. 1. Works means - works of the law of moses, etc. blah blah N.T. Wright, 2nd temple judaism, blah. I know. I've heard it. However, if the ESV was translated properly (I have no clue if it is), it says 'not your own doing', rather than Works/works of the law of moses. 2. This is talking about 'initial justification' blah blah Lutheran-Catholic joint declaration on Justification blah. I know. I've heard it. However, Paul doesn't seem to understand Trentine Catholicism, in that he says in v.6 "and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ". It goes straight from justification by grace, to glorification, theosis etc. This left my Catholic-side screaming: 'For the love of God Paul, don't you know about meritous good works! don't you know about Purgatory and indulgences! don't you know that you are one of the greatest of the saints, and that if you look at yourself in the mirror and say a hail mary you will earn 1000 years out of purgatory because of the merits of ... well you and the saints'. I realize this is one passage, but still, if you were in Ephesus, this was all the church really knew outside the basic life of Jesus, and the OT. It seemed enough for them.

Good Lord, I seem like a Calvinist. Ephesians 1 will do it to all of us... 'he desireth that all men might be saved' come on Andrew, remember 'sins of the world-not sins of the elect' ... just repeat it over and over again.... There we go, Wesleyan once more. Moving on.

Now the other thing is, I didn't discuss Chp 2:10, in typical Protestant style. "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." But again, this says nothing about Salvation, it only seems to me to be pointing to proof of justification, proof of election, proof that you are in God's covenant. There is my protestant reading of Ephesians 1-2, may God have mercy on my soul, I defy the position of the church.

I was always guilted by Catholics and Orthodox who would say that if this IS the gospel, if this is the message, why did no one preach it throughout church history until Martin Luther in the 16th century. Why? How could the Gospel be lost. That is why I bought into Catholic interpretation, because it is a good argument. However when I honestly look at the text and at the life of Protestant and Catholic churches in my city and elsewhere, I have to embarrassingly say along with Luther that I really do think this is the gospel. I really do think that Christ lived, died, and rose to save us, to make dead people alive, not to empower us to be better, not to gain victory and then make us gain victory ourselves, not to make bad people pull themselves up. I think the fundamental premise is that they can't, ever. And even Christ's victory over death still has each Christian die. And even his victory over sin can't in this life free us from sin. I think it's a noble ideal, that we somehow become like Christ and merit our salvation. However, I can't do it. Me, personally, I can't be that way. Only Christ can I think, I will always be the same selfish fat bastard. But Christ is so much more, and when I give up everything and let Christ work through me, when I admit that I am rubbish, and give up my hope that I can save myself, then God changes me. I have to much faillure to be triumphalistic. My good works were predestined by God, and they don't merit anything other than thanksgiving to Him.

Matthew 25.
If Ephesians 1 was the Calvinist Gospel, then Matthew 25 is the social gospel. Now the idea of Covenant is still something I don't truly understand, but here is my underdeveloped view of it. Belief, faith, baptism, communion, are all things we do to enter into the covenant, but the key is really submission to Christ and trust in his ability to save us. Now the thing I never noticed before is that at the beginning Christ seperates the sheep and the goats, sheep on the right. Sheep on the right. Christ = The Good Shepherd (Ez.34, Jn.10), believers = Sheep, those in his covenant, those who believe, those who are saved. And on the left he seperates the goats, goat typically associated with Satan. As 1 John tells us, all who sin are children of the devil, which means, everyone except Christians and the Blessed Virgin Mary (Gen 3:15 + 1Jn3:8 = sinless Mary) are goats/children of the devil.

Now I was always taught that those who looked after the poor, who did everything 'for the least of these', were the ones who go to Heaven, and the others who neglected the poor, hungry, and naked, were the ones who went to Hell. HOWEVER, it says that to the ones on the right that they served him well, that they did the work of Christ, but they are judged TOGETHER, or Corporately. The Church itself is judged as Righteous on Judgement day, not the individul. Those outside the Church who do not share in it's corporate blessings, those who have not stayed in Christ, are the ones who are judged to go to "eternal punishment".

Thus, my believe is that we must stay "in Christ". I've always said that Predestination doesn't honestly matter, because if we are predestined not to believe in predestination, there's no changing our minds anyway. I am thinking that St. Paul's theme the more and more I read and re-read, is that we must be "In Christ" and those the people who are saved and will be made holy through sanctification, and that it is by grace, through faith, the good gift, salvation, the gift of God.

Facebook Religious Status

I realize that people complain about my constant switching of religious views on facebook. I should officially stop all changes until Easter this year, when I either will become a Roman Catholic, an Anglican, or maybe even some kind of crazy Lutheran. I switch my religious views depending on the day. Usually Sundays I'm an Anglican, as I go to an Anglican church, but usually in a month I do 3 Anglican masses, and 1 Roman Catholic. It's a balance a bit.

Really I am only officially a Baptist. I was baptized in a Baptist church in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Even if I agree with Roman Catholic theology, that doesn't make me a Catholic, I'd have to be confirmed, and likewise being an Anglican would only be the result of an Anglican confirmation. So I should just leave it at Christian in general - or as the traditionalist Catholics believe 'heretic' - but that isn't one of the options on facebook.

Anyway, in all fairness I've basically been Orthodox in my theology. My unbelief in the 'filioque' and my rejection of Papal Infallibility as well as Sola Scriptura and the Protestant concept of a priesthood of all believers. So I'm a bit in the middle, I've always felt I'd fit theologically into East Orthodox shoes, however Bishop Ware (Orthodox) says that if you live in the west and want to be Orthodox, just become Catholic. That was what I read when I first decided to tell my parents I was becoming Catholic. So from the start I've really loved the Orthodox, but as my blog has illustrated, they won't have me. Thus I am stuck either being an Anglican Catholic, or a Roman Catholic. But the case is, that I should stop changing the status until I actually officially AM one.

Westminster Confession: Scripture 2

As I was re-reading and rethinking my judgement upon the Westminster Confession I realized I might have been a little harsh. I'm not a proponent of Sola Scriptura, however I am realizing that it is the Word of God and deserves respect and the ability to critique tradition. Of course I believe it is from Tradition we recieve the canon etc, however I am reading a book called "Christ and the Bible" by John W. Wenham right now, and he goes to show how Christians in the early church had a high view of the Old Testament, and Christ himself when confronted always said 'it is written'.

Maybe much of biblical interpretations are up for debate, but then I realized, so is Tradition. I've been studying the Orthodox-Catholic split recently and I've learned that the Greeks and Latins had much different Traditions, both equally valid and apostolic, but people drew different conclusions and interpretted patristic quotes in many ways. So yes, nothing is black and white, but Scripture can't be thrown out just because some parts are debatable.

Westminster Confession of Faith: Scripture

To me, the easiest thing in the world to be, would be a Calvinist. You get to call yourself one of the elect - which is a cool title - you get certainty about your salvation, you get answers to every question you could imagine. I've always said that the two best theological systems which answer everything coherently for the most part are 1) Calvinism, and 2) Catholicism. Now I'm an Anglican/Orthodox Wesleyan today at least, so why wouldn't I just pick one of these great systems? I decided to read the Westminster Confession today, to remind me of all the reasons I can't be a Presbyterian and I read all of the first part about scripture. Here is a link to it:http://www.reformed.org/documents/wcf_with_proofs/ (I've seen Jared rip the Council of Trent to peices, so I don't feel as bad taking one of his favourites and pointing out my opinion on it's shortcomings)

It starts off proclaiming that God is revealed in Nature/Natural Theology, but that so His will might be known he revealed himself in Scripture. As well the Apocrypha is NOT to be declared inspired Scripture. The 'true' OT canon contains only 39 books.

Problems with this:

1. Jesus never left a command for people to write scripture
2. Jews couldn't agree on a canon for the Old Testament. Till 90CE council of Jamnia, after the Christian church was already established.
3. Scripture has no canon list within itself
4. St. Paul and the others constantly quote the Septuagint - the Greek Old Testament which contains the Apocrypha.
5. Jesus is actually God's revelation and His Word.


"We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to an high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture." WCF V (prooftext used-1 Timothy 3:15)

The problem is, the early church DIDN'T have a bible, outside the Septuagint, which was the Old Testament, which contained the apocrypha, and possibly they had some Pauline literature. And that prooftext/footnote says the CHURCH is the pillar of truth, not scripture.

"The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself: and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly" WCF IX

Hmmm. So which scripture do we pick if something is unclear. For example, in Corinthians it talks about baptism for the dead... which scripture do we go to for that? In 1 John 5 it talks about a "Mortal Sin" which leads to death. But what scripture can we use to interpret that?

In closing the Westminster confession says of Scripture, that it is "The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined" -WCF X

That is the pipe dream that all of Protestantism rests on. The idea that somehow scripture actually speaks... it's a text, and it has to be read, it has to be translated, and it has to be interpretted. The Calvinists seemed to have arbitrarily picked up the bible, removed the apocrypha, and said that it is in short the Christian Qu'ran. If this were so, all matters of faith would be easy. Almost as easy as having a Pope who is essentially God on Earth and can infallibly define any article of the faith, and bind and loose anything on earth and in heaven. I wonder if he 'defined' God as nonexistant, then he could make everything end. But as the Catholics say, he will get hit by lightning before that happens... a very realistic scenario... but enough of all this childishness.

In short, I would love to be a Catholic or a Calvinist, but there are many questions of the faith which cannot be simply answered, they are a mystery, as only the Orthodox realize.